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3 New Unintended Consequences of Health Care Reform

As the Affordable Care Act (ACA) continues its gradual and bumpy rollout, health care providers are utilizing various strategies to comply and adapt. Many of these approaches, some of which include M&A activity, IT upgrades and shared service agreements are now creating new risks of their own.

1. Continuity of Care

Many aspects of the ACA and other healthcare trends are driving M&A or shared service agreements among hospitals, physicians and other providers. These new relationships can present serious challenges for managing a patient’s treatment across different organizations.

“There’s a risk that one organization might not provide care consistent with the other,” said Dan Nash, national healthcare practice leader, Zurich in North America. “Oftentimes, it’s not contractually required for them to do so.”

Patients being transferred from system to system might be exposed to different approaches to care and different levels of treatment.

Care managers can do a lot to help alleviate risks associated with continuity of care. Having a “concierge” that knows how each system operates can make transitions much easier for patients and explain why treatments differ from system to system.

“There’s a risk that one organization will not provide care consistent with the standards of the other. Oftentimes, it’s not contractually required for them to do so.”
— Dan Nash, National Healthcare Practice Leader, Zurich North America

“It creates a feeling that they’re working together,” said Dan Nash, national healthcare practice leader, Zurich in North America. “If you have a care manager through the process, it can give the patient a level of comfort that takes away anxiousness,” said Nash. “Then they feel like they’re being taken care of.”

2. Compliance

Between the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and a long list of other government organizations and mandates, there are serious demands on health systems.

“Real estate may be all about location, location, location but healthcare is all about compliance, compliance, compliance,” said Nash.

A lot of risk managers are focused on digital-related exposures, but a significant amount of serious data breaches are still the result of “paper losses.”

“One example happened on a subway in 2009 when a hospital worker left records for 192 patients on a train,” said Nash about an incident involving a mid-Atlantic hospital “It led to the hospital paying $1 million to the government in 2011 to settle the potential HIPAA violations.”

Despite the risks, health care providers are still reluctant to buy coverage around it.

“People used to look at banks with an eye toward their brick-and-mortar locations. ‘My money is safe because it’s housed within those walls,’ they’d think. While that thinking is antiquated when dealing with finances, it still rings true in the health care world,” said Nash.

“Often customers we talk to say it’s important, but not in budget this year,” said Nash. Furthermore, their IT departments seem to think they’ve got the problem figured out on the digital side and companies generally don’t pay enough attention to the possibility of paper losses.

To help combat the risk, Zurich offers to qualified customers a Breach Coach consulting service, during which an experienced cyber breach risk engineering consultant can assess where businesses are most vulnerable to a data loss.

3. Outpatient Treatment

Currently, 60% of hospital services are delivered inpatient with 40% of care delivered through outpatient facilities. Under the Affordable Care Act, the proportion will likely be reversed, so that 60% of care is delivered through outpatient facilities.

“It’s risky because patients generally see hospitals as places where they are safer in the event of an adverse reaction,” said Nash. “They might not have that same sense of security with an outpatient facility.

Nash compared that notion to the way many Americans thought about banks 20 or 30 years ago.

“People used to look at banks with an eye toward their brick-and-mortar locations. ‘My money is safe because it’s housed within those walls,’ they’d think. While that thinking is antiquated when dealing with finances, it still rings true in the health care world,” said Nash. “People feel safer and think they’re getting better care if they’re in a large hospital. At an outpatient facility, that comfort level isn’t the same.”

Another risk of having more outpatient procedures is that the health care provider has less time for observing patients. With patients going home after their procedure, it becomes even more important for the patient to carefully follow instructions: like taking medicine at scheduled times and doing proper rehab. Any health care provider can tell you that’s never guaranteed. But even if they don’t follow the care instructions, the hospital is still responsible.

This article was produced by Zurich and not the Risk & Insurance® editorial team.Note: This content is provided for informational purposes only. Please consult with qualified legal counsel to address your particular circumstances and needs. Neither Risk & Insurance® nor Zurich are providing legal advice and assume no liability concerning the information set forth above.

Zurich Insurance Group, Ltd is an insurance-based financial services provider with a global network of subsidiaries and offices in North America and Europe as well as in Asia Pacific, Latin America and other markets.

Airlines typically can offset revenue losses for cancellations due to bad weather either by saving on fuel and salary costs or rerouting passengers on other flights, but this year’s revenue losses from the worst winter storm season in years might be too much for traditional measures.

At least one broker said the time may be right for airlines to consider crafting custom insurance programs to account for such devastating seasons.

For a good part of the country, including many parts of the Southeast, snow and ice storms have wreaked havoc on flight cancellations, with a mid-February storm being the worst of all. On Feb. 13, a snowstorm from Virginia to Maine caused airlines to scrub 7,561 U.S. flights, more than the 7,400 cancelled flights due to Hurricane Sandy, according to MasFlight, industry data tracker based in Bethesda, Md.

Just United, alone, the world’s second-largest airline, reported that it had cancelled 22,500 flights in January and February, 2014, according to Bloomberg. The airline’s completed regional flights was 87.1 percent, which was “an extraordinarily low level,” and almost 9 percentage points below its mainline operations, it reported.

And another potentially heavy snowfall was forecast for last weekend, from California to New England.

The sheer amount of cancellations this winter are likely straining airlines’ bottom lines, said Katie Connell, a spokeswoman for Airlines for America, a trade group for major U.S. airline companies.

“The airline industry’s fixed costs are high, therefore the majority of operating costs will still be incurred by airlines, even for canceled flights,” Connell wrote in an email. “If a flight is canceled due to weather, the only significant cost that the airline avoids is fuel; otherwise, it must still pay ownership costs for aircraft and ground equipment, maintenance costs and overhead and most crew costs. Extended storms and other sources of irregular operations are clear reminders of the industry’s operational and financial vulnerability to factors outside its control.”

Bob Mann, an independent airline analyst and consultant who is principal of R.W. Mann & Co. Inc. in Port Washington, N.Y., said that two-thirds of costs — fuel and labor — are short-term variable costs, but that fixed charges are “unfortunately incurred.” Airlines just typically absorb those costs.

“I am not aware of any airline that has considered taking out business interruption insurance for weather-related disruptions; it is simply a part of the business,” Mann said.

Chuck Cederroth, managing director at Aon Risk Solutions’ aviation practice, said carriers would probably not want to insure airlines against cancellations because airlines have control over whether a flight will be canceled, particularly if they don’t want to risk being fined up to $27,500 for each passenger by the Federal Aviation Administration when passengers are stuck on a tarmac for hours.

“How could an insurance product work when the insured is the one who controls the trigger?” Cederroth asked. “I think it would be a product that insurance companies would probably have a hard time providing.”

But Brad Meinhardt, U.S. aviation practice leader, for Arthur J. Gallagher & Co., said now may be the best time for airlines — and insurance carriers — to think about crafting a specialized insurance program to cover fluke years like this one.

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“I would be stunned if this subject hasn’t made its way up into the C-suites of major and mid-sized airlines,” Meinhardt said. “When these events happen, people tend to look over their shoulder and ask if there is a solution for such events.”

Airlines often hedge losses from unknown variables such as varying fuel costs or interest rate fluctuations using derivatives, but those tools may not be enough for severe winters such as this year’s, he said. While products like business interruption insurance may not be used for airlines, they could look at weather-related insurance products that have very specific triggers.

For example, airlines could designate a period of time for such a “tough winter policy,” say from the period of November to March, in which they can manage cancellations due to 10 days of heavy snowfall, Meinhardt said. That amount could be designated their retention in such a policy, and anything in excess of the designated snowfall days could be a defined benefit that a carrier could pay if the policy is triggered. Possibly, the trigger would be inches of snowfall. “Custom solutions are the idea,” he said.

“Airlines are not likely buying any of these types of products now, but I think there’s probably some thinking along those lines right now as many might have to take losses as write-downs on their quarterly earnings and hope this doesn’t happen again,” he said. “There probably needs to be one airline making a trailblazing action on an insurance or derivative product — something that gets people talking about how to hedge against those losses in the future.”

Katie Kuehner-Hebert is a freelance writer based in California. She has more
than two decades of journalism experience and expertise in financial writing.
She can be reached at riskletters@lrp.com.

A Modern Claims Philosophy: Proactive and Integrated

According to some experts, “The best claim is the one that never happens.”

But is that even remotely realistic?

Experienced risk professionals know that in the real world, claims and losses are inevitable. After all, it’s called Risk Management, not Risk Avoidance.

And while no one likes losses, there are rich lessons to be gleaned from the claims management process. Through careful tracking and analysis of losses, risk professionals spot gaps in their risk control programs and identify new or emerging risks.

Aspen Insurance embraces this philosophy by viewing the data and expertise of their claims operation as a valuable asset. Unlike more traditional carriers, Aspen Insurance integrates their claims professionals into all of their client work – from the initial risk assessment and underwriting process through ongoing risk management consulting and loss control.

This proactive and integrated approach results in meaningful reductions to the frequency and severity of client losses. But when the inevitable does happen, Aspen Insurance claims professionals utilize their established understanding of client risks and operations to produce some truly amazing solutions.

“I worked at several of the most well known and respected insurance companies in my many years as a claims executive. But few of them utilize an approach that is as innovative as Aspen Insurance,” said Stephen Perrella, senior vice president, casualty claims, at Aspen Insurance.

“We do a lot of trending and data analysis to provide as much information as possible to our clients. Our analytics can help clients improve upon their own risk management procedures.”
— Stephen Perrella, Senior Vice President, Casualty Claims, Aspen Insurance

Utilizing claims expertise to improve underwriting

Acting as adviser and advocate, Aspen integrates the entire process under a coverage coordinator who ensures that the underwriters, claims and insureds agree on consistent, clear definitions and protocols. With claims professionals involved in the initial account review and the development of form language, Aspen’s underwriters have a full sense of risks so they can provide more specific and meaningful coverage, and identify risks and exclusions that the underwriter might not consider during a routine underwriting process.

“Most insurers don’t ever want to talk about claims and underwriting in the same sentence,” said Perrella. “That archaic view can potentially hurt the insurance company as well as their business partners.”Aspen Insurance considered a company working on a large bridge refurbishment project on the West Coast as a potential insured, posing the array of generally anticipated construction-related risks. During underwriting, its claims managers discovered there was a large oil storage facility underneath the bridge. If a worker didn’t properly tether his or her tools, or a piece of steel fell onto a tank and fractured it, the consequences would be severe. Shutting down a widely used waterway channel for an oil cleanup would be devastating. The business interruption claims alone would be astronomical.

“We narrowed the opportunity for possible claims that the underwriter was unaware existed at the outset,” said Perrella.

Risk management improved

Claims professionals help Aspen Insurance’s clients with their risk management programs. When data analysis reveals high numbers of claims in a particular area, Aspen readily shares that information with the client. The Aspen team then works with the client to determine if there are better ways to handle certain processes.

“We do a lot of trending and data analysis to provide as much information as possible to our clients,” said Perrella. “Our analytics can help clients improve upon their own risk management procedures.”For a large restaurant-and-entertainment group with locations in New York and Las Vegas, Aspen’s consultative approach has been critical. After meeting with risk managers and using analytics to study trends in the client’s portfolio, Aspen learned that the sheer size and volume of customers at each location led to disparate profiles of patron injuries.

Specifically, the organization had a high number of glass-related incidents across its multiple venues. So Aspen’s claims and underwriting professionals helped the organization implement new reporting protocols and risk-prevention strategies that led to a significant drop in glass-related claims over the following two years. Where one location would experience a disproportionate level of security assault or slip & fall claims, the possible genesis for those claims was discussed with the insured and corrective steps explored in response. Aspen’s proactive management of the account and working relationship with its principals led the organization to make changes that not only lowered the company’s exposures, but also kept patrons safer.

World-class claims management

Despite expert planning and careful prevention, losses and claims are inevitable. With Aspen’s claims department involved from the earliest stages of risk assessment, the department has developed world-class claims-processing capability.

“When a claim does arrive, everyone knows exactly how to operate,” said Perrella. “By understanding the perspectives of both the underwriters and the actuaries, our claims folks have grown to be better business people.

“We have dramatically reduced the potential for any problematic communication breakdown between our claims team, broker and the client,” said Perrella.A fire ripped through an office building rendering it unusable by its seven tenants. An investigation revealed that an employee of the client intentionally set the fire. The client had not purchased business interruption insurance, and instead only had coverage for the physical damage to the building.

The Aspen claims team researched a way to assist the client in filing a third-party claim through secondary insurance that covered the business interruption portion of the loss. The attention, knowledge and creativity of the claims team saved the client from possible insurmountable losses.

Modernize your carrier relationship

Aspen Insurance’s claims philosophy is a great example of how this carrier’s innovative perspective is redefining the underwriter-client relationship. Learn more about how Aspen Insurance can benefit your risk management program at http://www.aspen.co/insurance/.

This article is provided for news and information purposes only and does not necessarily represent Aspen’s views and does constitute legal advice. This article reflects the opinion of the author at the time it was written taking into account market, regulatory and other conditions at the time of writing which may change over time. Aspen does not undertake a duty to update the article.

This article was produced by the R&I Brand Studio, a unit of the advertising department of Risk & Insurance, in collaboration with Aspen Insurance. The editorial staff of Risk & Insurance had no role in its preparation.

Aspen Insurance is a business segment of Aspen Insurance Holdings Limited. It provides insurance for property, casualty, marine, energy and transportation, financial and professional lines, and programs business.